Park Dedicated to President Roosevelt on His Namesake Island

October 18, 2012 at 4:00 am

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others walk the perimeter of the Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island on Wednesday, Oct. 17. The park opens to the public on Oct. 24. Flickr/ nycmayorsoffice

The completion of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park was celebrated on Wednesday on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, an 800-ft-wide sliver of land in the middle of the East River, beneath the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. The park, named for the president who led the country through the most trying times of the Great Depression and World War II, has been decades in the making and was designed by the esteemed architect Louis Kahn, who completed the plans the year he died, in 1974. Construction began on March 29, 2010, 38 years after it was announced. It opens to the public on Oct. 24.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was joined by Governor Andrew Cuomo and President Bill Clinton, among other dignitaries, at the Four Freedoms Park dedication.

“Today, we dedicate this park to New York’s single greatest contribution to the preservation of our republic, and the peace of our world, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” said Bloomberg of the three-term president who hailed from Hyde Park, New York. “It will stand forever as a monument to the man who brought us through the Great Depression and brought us victory over great evil.”

The mayor also thanked Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel, CEO of the Four Freedoms Park LLC and the chairman of the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy board of directors, who also serves as Chairman of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York.

WATCH VIDEO:

Richard Heffner, host of The Open Mind, speaks with Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel about the memorial park and shows a tribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms Park narrated by the great actor Orson Welles, who died in 1985. Video courtesy of The Open Mind.

RELATED CONTENT

In the late 60s, New York City Mayor John Lindsay proposed to reinvent Roosevelt Island (then called Welfare Island) into a residential community. Today the island is still primarily residential, but with the opening of Four Freedoms and the Cornell NYC Tech campus in 2017, it will increasingly be a destination for visitors. The park is named after the four freedoms Roosevelt touted during a speech of the same name given on January 6, 1941: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

WATCH VIDEO:

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addresses a joint session of Congress in his “Four Freedoms” speech on Jan. 6, 1941, shortly after his unprecedented third term began. Video courtesy of Classic News Clips.

Funders

MetroFocus is made possible by James and Merryl Tisch, the Anderson Family Fund, Judy and Josh Weston, Bernard and Irene Schwartz, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Anti-Semitism, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, the Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, The Dorothy Schiff Endowment for News and Public Affairs Programming, Jody and John Arnhold, Rosalind P. Walter, the Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn Foundation, Laura and Jim Ross, and Shailaja and Umesh Nagarkatte.